


Hunted, Haunted, Moderately Daunted

by makemadej (santamonicayachtclub)



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series), Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: First Kiss, Haunted Houses, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/santamonicayachtclub/pseuds/makemadej
Summary: “I wish I had a knife,” Shane announced suddenly.“To...protect us from the sound?”“No, dumbass, so we can carve pumpkins in a spooky castle. That would be peak Halloween. Or a Sharpie, that would work too.” He palmed a pumpkin and regarded it seriously, Hamlet from the Independent Shakespeare Company all over again. “We could draw some funny little faces on these guys.”
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 32
Kudos: 180
Collections: Skeptic Believer Book Club Hallowe'en Fic Exchange 2020





	Hunted, Haunted, Moderately Daunted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiraclesofPaul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraclesofPaul/gifts).



> This is an AU where the pandemic has already ended. What a world!

_then they told us all they wanted was a sound that could kill someone from a distance_

* * *

There was an art to becoming human.

Quarantine lifted like a slow, apocalyptic dance of the seven veils, revealing the promise of reality one layer at a time. Ryan was still easing his way, step by gradual step, into relearning how to operate in the world. After more than six months of social distancing and aggressive hygiene and becoming fluent in Zoom, it was hard to let himself do anything else.

The first step was daring to believe the reports from the CDC, the proof that cases had reached a plateau and then a steady decline. Venturing out in public was next, then being cleared to have limited mask-free contact with others who had tested negative. Ryan wasn’t keen about still having to be tested regularly, but he had to admit it was the most necessary of evils. The youth demographics, ages 18-30, were the ones at the vanguard of phase four, which was possibly the weirdest honor ever bestowed on anyone. After all, if there was a resurgence of the virus and they all got smacked back down a phase, Ryan’s age group would be among the first to know. 

And, as much as he enjoyed reminding Shane he was too old for the youth demographic and therefore basically geriatric, he wasn’t super into the idea of having to process that kind of information.

So he’d stayed cautious, partly because it just seemed prudent and partly because it was still a force of habit. Masks and ever-present hand sanitizer and holding meetings remotely or at outdoor locations, because early fall in LA was still basically summer. They were still so early into phase four of reopening that something as mundane as walking into a Starbucks without a mask felt like the breaking of an enormous taboo. 

Being cleared to shoot an actual on-site episode for the new Buzzfeed Supernatural season almost defied belief. 

No one on their team was expecting it to actually happen. Between their Watcher projects and editing True Crime, Ryan had sort of assumed Supernatural would stick to their currently outlined schedule of remaining off-location. 

And now they suddenly had a chance to film a quick and dirty teaser episode in time for Halloween.

“We’re back, baby!” Shane announced via Zoom when the confirmation email came in. 

“It’s actually looking really good,” Katie admitted, looking a little shell-shocked herself. “The place has been closed since March, and Minjung and her team went in there all suited up when they were bringing in their equipment. If you guys want to do it, it looks like we’re on.” 

“Oh, we are _so_ on. Right, little guy?”

Ryan had minimized their conversation in order to continue gaping at the email, but he was pretty sure Shane was either flashing him finger guns or winking. Maybe both. 

“We can actually do it?” he blurted out, toggling back to Zoom. 

Shane was indeed still poised for action, finger guns blazing.

“Yeah!” Katie’s eyes were huge. “HR and legal have your back. And if you need some time to think about it first, there’s no pressure to decide right now. We can—”

“I’m in,” Ryan said firmly. “I mean, I’ll probably regret it later, so let’s not email back _just_ yet, but yeah. I want to do it.” 

* * *

Getting permission from the facility itself and the grand Buzzfeed powers-that-be had only been part of the equation. The third was Minjung Burgess, PhD candidate in Computer-Based Music Theory and Acoustics at Stanford University.

After weeks of back and forth correspondence, trying to figure out how to make this work, Ryan had been ready to cut their losses and go forward with a standard ghost hunt. Then Minjung contacted them to say she’d finally gotten the all-clear from her adviser. 

That was when everything leveled up.

“It’s true that you can’t see sound,” Minjung said during their interview earlier in the day, “but it’s a very physical thing. You’ve got seismic waves that travel through the earth and acoustic sounds that travel through the atmosphere. And that’s not even getting into the impact of different pitches and frequencies.”

“Tell the people some more about all that,” Shane said jovially. “And by the people, I mostly mean Ryan. I’m pretty sure he thinks pitch is just something you do to a baseball.”

“Yeah, and frequency is what you do with your mouth,” Ryan fired back, already cringing at himself. Behind him, he heard TJ try to muffle a snort. “Moving on!” 

“So.” Minjung beamed. “The focus of my study is infrasound. Infrasound is what we call low-frequency sound waves that are inaudible to humans. Any sound between zero and twenty hertz falls into this category. Studies have yielded reports of infrasound causing everything from tingling sensations to feelings of dread to a general heightening of emotions.” 

“Interesting,” Shane said, steepling his fingers. “All things that are associated with spookiness.”

“That’s right!” Minjung looked delighted. Ryan didn’t have the heart to rain on her parade by mentioning he’d caught Shane poring over the infrasound Wikipedia page the other day. “And since people don’t know when infrasound is occurring, these sensations have sometimes been attributed to supernatural phenomena. Sometimes it can make your eyeballs vibrate!”

“You know, I’m excited to be here but I’m not super comfortable trying to spend the night someplace that could literally make my eyeballs vibrate.” Ryan cast a suspicious glance at the castle behind them, trying to mentally control+f the location of Minjung’s generators. “

“My eyeballs could’ve been sucked from their sockets!” Shane hissed gleefully, doing a bad Buzz Lightyear impression. 

Minjung blinked politely.

“He’s doing a bad Buzz Lightyear impression,” Ryan clarified. “Please, keep going.”

“It’s actually super cool,” Minjung said, “because your eyes have a resonant frequency of exactly nineteen hertz. So if you’re exposed to infrasound waves of the same frequency, your eyes would then vibrate along with it.”

“That’s freaky as hell,” Ryan said at the same time Shane leaned forward in his chair and announced, “That is super cool.”

“Also that,” Ryan amended. “As long as it’s not happening to me, that’s _incredibly_ cool.” 

“Oh,” Minjung said, getting a rather conspiratorial look on her face, “it is. People who claim to have seen ghosts may have just been responding to their eyes vibrating in time to a corresponding infrasound frequency. When that happens, it cuts your peripheral vision way down, which can give the impression you’re seeing weird indistinct shapes out of the corner of your eye. Also, it activates your fight or flight impulse, which can cause you to get the chills often associated with paranormal cold spots.”

“So you’re saying ghosts aren’t real and science is the Clarissa that explains it all,” Shane mused. Ryan had a sudden urge to elbow him even though he was well out of elbowing range. “How long have people known this is a thing?”

“Good question!” Shane preened as if he was the one on the brink of earning a PhD. “Scientists have known about infrasound for much longer, but a British engineer named Vic Tandy was the first person to make the connection between infrasound and purported paranormal activity.” 

“So he’s kind of the granddaddy of it all?” Ryan asked. 

Minjung threw back her head and laughed, earrings jingling. “I mean, I’ve never personally heard him called that, but sure? In one famous case back in the 80’s, he got to the bottom of why so many people thought a certain research laboratory was haunted. It turned out they were unknowingly responding to the effects of a huge exhaust fan that vibrated at infrasound frequencies, which then made them feel like they were seeing things. He conducted experiments in several other locations that were supposedly haunted, and when the findings were all similar, he published a paper about it called The Ghost in the Machine. It’s pretty cool stuff.” 

“So why this location?” Ryan gestured vaguely behind them, counting on TJ or Mark to make it look sweepingly cinematic later on. “Why Preston Castle?”

“Castles are a great place to test this because they tend to have very thick walls that resonate better.” Minjung leaned forward on her elbows as if imparting a secret and not rehashing what she’d already explained via email multiple times. “So, for my study, I’ve gotten permission to set up a few infrasound generators and have volunteers visit the premises and report on their feelings.”

“Like us!” Shane said brightly.

He looked so ebullient, there in the sunlight with his ill-fitting dad-on-vacation hat and his lopsided collar. Ryan had a sudden urge, stronger by far than the urge to elbow him, to reach over and squeeze his hand. 

“Yeah,” he agreed instead, feeling his face tug into a dopey grin. “Like us.”

* * *

“Can you imagine having to live here?”

During the day, Preston Castle looked almost nice. Framed by pines and lush green fields, it was a sprawl of red brick buildings dominated by a bell tower that made it look more like a church than a former home for wayward boys. Now that night had fallen, Ryan was acutely aware of all the places spirits, spooks, and infrasound generators might be lurking. Most of the outbuildings were still closed, but the old dormitory had been made available to them for their stay.

In his opinion, that was more than enough.

From his sleeping bag, Shane scrunched up his face. “I mean, if I was an old-timey rapscallion getting sent to juvie, I’d probably think a California castle was pretty choice.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Of course you would. What would old-timey Shane be in for?”

“I don’t know. Pickpocketing, probably.” 

“You look like one of those massive Home Depot skeletons, man. There’s no way.”

“Yeah, but I’m light of hand and light on my feet! And if we’re talking when this place first opened, back in the 1890’s, then I’m probably malnourished and have rickets or something, so I’m unobtrusive. What about you?"

“Realistically? Just being a brown kid in the 1890’s. But if we’re talking cool backstories, I’d want it to be for, like, stealing a baguette and trying to outrun the cops. I’m talking about jumping over the rooftops like Aladdin and almost getting away, that kind of thing.”

“Ah yes,” Shane drawled. “Those wonderful Old West baguettes.”

“Hey, I’m not trying to crush your dreams of being a rickety pickpocket,” Ryan protested mildly.

“No, I’m pretty sure you kind of did.” 

Ryan chucked a decorative gourd at him.

During a trip to Trader Joe’s, Katie had picked up some candles and mini pumpkins to lend the place a creepier vibe, as if it needed the help. It had looked festive before the sun went down, but now the mini pumpkins looked like discolored skulls and every crackle of the candle wicks was loud as a bone breaking. Ryan closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound of his own breathing. 

“I wish I had a knife,” Shane announced suddenly.

“To...protect us from the sound?”

“No, dumbass, so we can carve pumpkins in a spooky castle. That would be peak Halloween. Or a Sharpie, that would work too.” He palmed a pumpkin and regarded it seriously, Hamlet from the Independent Shakespeare Company all over again. “We could draw some funny little faces on these guys.” 

“Great,” Ryan grunted. “Then we’d get high on Sharpie fumes _and_ pounded by infrasonic frequencies _and_ be haunted.” 

Shane tsk-tsked at him. “Oh, Ryan, I just don’t understand why you hate fun.”

* * *

They separated for bedtime.

It was part science, keeping them apart to record their responses to getting infrasound-bombed in a haunted castle, and part horror movie trope. Shane even made sure to get in an obligatory, “Hey pal, we should split up and make it easier for the ghoulies to pick us off!” for the camera. 

Ryan had giggled and facepalmed and been so bowled over with affection it might as well have been a physical force.

Then he had gathered up his things and relocated to another dormitory across the hall.

He couldn’t articulate why he was so antsy. They’d ticked all the other standard stuff off their list: spirit box, taunting, peeking around for ghosts, Ryan swearing up and down that they’d gotten a legit Ovilus response and Shane swearing up and down they hadn’t. Spending the night was always in the cards. But something about it nagged at Ryan anyway, beyond his typical anxiety. Something about having the capability of being closer to Shane and moving farther away from him instead. That was what had him flopping like a landed fish in one of the narrow dorm beds, too discomfited to even think of closing his eyes.

Even though it was supposed to be impossible, he swore he could sense the generators pulsing like mutated hearts, pumping their influence through every inch of the room. If he closed his eyes, he could almost see the throb of sound waves, which of course he spent an indefinite amount of time trying to do even though it was an objectively bad idea that was in no way going to calm him down.

 _And_ , Shane’s voice in his head reminded him dryly, _you can’t fucking see sound, dipshit_. 

That was his first mistake. The second was when he decided to look up The Ghost in the Machine article Minjung had mentioned.

He knew before he did it that it was a terrible idea, and then he went ahead and did it anyway.

“I just want to state for the record,” Ryan informed his camera, “that I’m not doing this to freak myself out. If anything, I’m already at paramount freakout, so there’s nowhere to go but down anyway and maybe trying to read some dry scientific shit will help.”

Twenty minutes later, it had not.

“Well,” Ryan announced, already mentally editing his own jump cut. “That didn’t work.” 

When he closed his eyes, they refused to stay shut. Whether that was due to undetectable eyeball vibrations or not, Ryan couldn’t say and he definitely didn’t want to know. 

“Not like I didn’t see this coming, but there’s no fucking way I’m gonna be able to sleep here.”

His camera was unsympathetic.

He sent a few texts to Shane and got nothing back, which could be blamed on everything from Shane’s unnatural ability to sleep anywhere to patchy reception in an old-ass castle with thick-ass walls. 

Thick-ass walls swathed in shadows that were definitely wavering a little bit.

Ryan sat bolt upright and jammed his glasses back on. “Shane?”

No answer but the reverberation of his own voice. Ryan clutched his flashlight like a talisman.

He swallowed and stared hard across the room, eyes darting around for the source of the movement. “Shane, I swear to god, if I see a creepy figure out of the corner of my eye, it better be you.”

Still nothing. There were just too many dark corners to contend with. A sliver of moonlight peeked through one of the barred transom windows, which somehow made it worse. All the other empty beds around him suddenly seemed horrific, as if at any moment something would coalesce out of the sheets and shadows and rise up towards him. From somewhere near the gutted hole of a fireplace, there was a rustle of movement.

Fear knotted itself into Ryan’s veins.

There were things Ryan believed that he hadn’t thought of lately, not to this extent. He hadn’t had a real opportunity to shake the dust off those beliefs for months and now they all came roaring back with a vengeance, raw and wild and bristling with what-ifs. 

He threw off his sleeping bag and bolted back into the other room.

When he shone his flashlight beam inside, Shane was gone.

* * *

“Okay,” Ryan said blandly. “This sucks. This really, _really_ sucks.”

His mind went completely blank, as if it was shutting down in self-defense, then grudgingly settled on on a single absurd thought: they needed to make some kind of rulebook. What was the protocol for losing your co-host, who was also your best friend, who was also the one person keeping you from completely self-destructing out of sheer terror? 

Ryan fumbled in his pajama pants for his phone and called him. His heart sank into his stomach when Shane’s phone gamely lit up on the nightstand next to his sleeping bag. 

There was another one for the rulebook they hadn’t written yet, and which Ryan would possibly be writing alone if Shane had been eaten by shadow monsters: absolutely no disappearing without your phone on you, no matter how crappy the reception is.

The cold of the floorboards seeping through his socks, Ryan did one last slow pan around the dormitory.

It was still alarmingly Shaneless. 

“So I’m gonna acknowledge this is some Wes Craven bullshit,” Ryan declared for absolutely no one’s benefit but his own. “But here’s what I’m going to do. We already split up, that was hella stupid, especially in a place this big when we’re this out of practice. So I’m just gonna commit to the stupid, you know? Get my shoes, take a look around the rest of the floor, maybe punch a shadow creature in the face if they’re trying to put one over on the big guy.” 

He was already back to his room when the distinct sound of a footstep resounded behind him.

Mid-monologue, Ryan shrieked.

“Ryan?”

When he whirled around, almost overbalancing in the process, Shane was staring at him. “What the fuck, dude, I’m going to fucking _kill_ you.”

He was peripherally aware of Shane letting out a surprised _whoa_ , followed by a soft chuckle. 

But then those long, lanky arms were coming up to wrap around him and everything else fell by the wayside. Ryan shoved his face into the folds of Shane’s hoodie and let it.

“Is this how you plan on killing me?” Shane asked after a few moments, his voice warm and amused.

“Yep.” Ryan was giddy with relief, drunk on the novelty of another body against his. “Is it working?”

“Dunno, better keep trying,” Shane replied, and tightened his arms around him just a bit more. 

Ryan wondered how many hugs Shane had gotten since quarantine, and if that was why he didn’t seem to mind letting this one go on for as long as it was.

He pushed his luck and burrowed in closer, letting himself melt into the feeling. A new crop of thoughts came flooding back, not just the ghost-oriented ones, but all the thoughts that amplified themselves when you were completely consumed by something and not just interacting with it from a distance. 

“So it turns out,” he mumbled into Shane’s shoulder, “there’s a huge difference between filming things remotely and actually getting into the thick of them. Who the hell knew, right?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty creepy here,” Shane said calmly. One of his hands was rubbing circles between Ryan’s shoulder blades, warm and steady. Ryan half wanted to tell him it felt nice and half didn’t want to draw attention to it in case that made him stop. Shane had a habit of doing mind-blowing things without realizing it until someone pointed them out to him, then ducking into himself like an overgrown turtle. “You know how many busted commodes I had to see before I remembered where the one actual functioning bathroom was?”

Ryan laughed hysterically. “You’re missing the point.”

“I know. I kinda figured you needed a distraction. There’s also a legit pile of bathtubs in the other room, did you know that?”

Reluctantly, Ryan pried his face out of Shane’s shoulder to look up at him. Around them, the walls wavered again.

“Oh, fuck no, man, did you see that?”

“The bathtubs?”

“ _No_ , what the fuck, why would I care about that? There’s something moving in here.”

“Listen,” Shane said, not unkindly, “I’m not trying to be extra Shane at you right now, but it’s a windy night, the moon keeps disappearing and reappearing, and there’s all kinds of loose curtains and weird shit in this place. Plus infrasound. It would be more surprising if spooky stuff _didn’t_ happen.”

“Okay, well, savor this moment because I _need_ you to be extra Shane for me right now. Tell me it was all the wind, try to get a ghost to give you a wedgie, stuff like that.”

He felt Shane’s chortle against his hair. “I’m on it. You want me to grab my stuff and stay in here with you? I’m kind of resigned to not sleeping at this point.”

“Yes,” Ryan said immediately, not caring how needy he sounded. “Let’s slumber party it up. Also,” he ventured, “are you okay if we stop filming for a little while?”

Shane snorted. “I guess, but I didn't get a swab jammed up my nose just to _not_ film our haunted sleepover.”

“I did too and I'm totally down with not filming,” Ryan pointed out.

“Yeah, but I have a lot more nose real estate than you.”

Ryan sighed. “Okay, let me rephrase that. I _also_ didn’t get a swab shoved up my nose to pretend I don’t want to hug my best pal. And I don’t really want to let go of him right now, so that’s gonna be weird to explain later if we leave the camera on. Besides, we have plenty of footage already.”

“Ah.” Even in the dark, he could sense a softening of Shane’s gaze. “I’ll turn it off.”

* * *

Ryan read somewhere once that there’s a reason fear is described as a kind of petrification. Fear calcifies and immobilizes and poisons the body from the inside like lead. But fear, he’s found, is also the great equalizer. Fear is capable of overcoming all other emotions, of leaving inhibitions in the dust, of whittling a person down to their most vulnerable.

It wasn’t entirely fear that led him to drag Shane down with him onto the floor beside one of the narrow beds, but it was present enough to block out the hangups and hesitations that would have usually intervened.

There was a strangeness about having Shane this close to him, but Ryan was too relieved to draw attention to it. He was still pinned at the intersection of parapsychology and paranoia, but at least now he was pinned with Shane close enough to touch.

There was a sharpness to the dormitory air.

Beside him, Shane lay as if dead on the floorboards that thrummed with the generator’s vibrations.

“I _swear_ I can feel it,” Ryan insisted.

“Science says you can’t,” Shane answered instantly. “I know science is a four-letter word for you, but just try and go with me here.”

Ryan clenched his teeth. “The only place I want to go with you right now is straight out the door.”

“That’s very sweet.“

“Maybe it’s time to rebrand,” Ryan mused, ignoring him. “What’s wrong with something like Buzzfeed Unfrolicked, where we just frolic in a different scenic location every episode?”

“I think we already invented that show and it’s called Weird And/Or Wonderful World.” 

He had a very compelling point, not that Ryan was going to say so. “Huh. Maybe it’s time to cut the Buzzfeed apron strings for good then.”

Without even looking at him, he could sense Shane’s smirk. “Careful, man, you're lucky we’re not still filming.”

“Thankfully we'd still have the magic of editing on our side.” Ryan grinned. “You know what, just blame it on the weird-ass sound waves making me say whatever the fuck pops into my head, how about that."

Beside him, Shane gave a comfortingly familiar snort. “That would mean you’ve been subject to weird-ass sound waves all your life.”

“Shane?” Ryan said cheerfully.

“Yeah?”

“Shut the hell up.”

* * *

It wasn’t _that_ weird when they squished themselves into one of the beds together, Ryan told himself.

So they were both kind of touch-starved, no big deal. They had a pandemic in the not-at-all-distant past and he’d read articles about how the process of reopening society fold by fold came with its own kind of trauma after being separated from it for so long. Staying the night in a haunted location and with each other for the first time since before quarantine began was kind of a big deal. They were still learning how to be in close proximity to other people. 

And if sharing space with Shane meant maybe he was a little more tactile than he usually allowed himself to be, there were plenty of extenuating circumstances he could blame it on. If he had to.

“Sorry if I’m making everything weird,” Ryan blurted out. “It’s been a crazy night.”

Shane shrugged. One of his shoulders was pressed flush with Ryan’s, nudging it up in a sympathy shrug of its own. “You’ve made plenty of other things much weirder, don’t stress about it. I mean, these aren’t exactly the coziest digs, but it’s not bad to have company.” 

Ryan’s throat tightened. Generators or not, his body felt as if it was being washed over by suffocating sheets of sound, something so powerful it snapped the last few cables of his composure. 

He wanted to clutch Shane's hand, to bury his face back in Shane’s neck, and it never occurred to him not to. Shane was his own kind of safe, warmth and messy hair and scruffy skin and long limbs that enfolded Ryan with such ease it was overwhelming.

He’d much rather let himself be overwhelmed by Shane than overwhelmed by feelings of imminent doom. Ryan held onto him as tightly as he dared, as if one of them was in danger of evaporating into nothing. 

“You’re having a rough time, aren’t you?” Shane said softly after a moment.

“It’s a triple decker of awful,” Ryan lamented. “Ghosts, sound waves, and the lurking possibility of the dreaded brown note. If I see a creepy doll on a tricycle, I'm out of here.” 

“I’m sorry, the brown what?”

“I was reading about infrasonic stuff. Turns out there’s a theory that frequencies between five and nine hertz can make your bowels just…” Ryan made an explosive gesture with one hand, then promptly resumed tucking it around Shane’s waist.

“I think I saw that on an episode of Mythbusters back in the day. And I’m pretty sure that myth got busted.” 

“It’s also one of theories of what happened at Dyatlov Pass.”

Shane’s laughter shook them both. “What, that they shat themselves until they died?”

“No, that there were infrasonic vibrations from a nuclear testing site and it drove them nuts.”

“Ryan,” Shane sighed. “Were you reading about this shit, no pun intended, when you were supposed to be trying to sleep?”

“I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep here, so I thought I’d educate myself,” Ryan protested. “Did you this one guy in 2008 did a study kind of like Minjung’s? He rigged up his own haunted house simulation, set up generators, and had people wander around. It didn’t take place in an already haunted location though, she’s got him there.” 

“Fascinating. You couldn’t have educated yourself about something cute and fluffy like puppies? Platypi? Hobbits?” 

“Hobbits?”

“They’ve got fuzzy little feet,” Shane said, like it should have been obvious. “Didn’t you read the books?” 

“I saw all the movies.” Ryan shivered. “You seriously can’t feel the generators?”

“Nope.” Shane thumped him gently on the back. “Science, remember?”

Ryan grimaced. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I can’t tell if it’s under us or over us, but I swear I can feel it.”

“It could be every preposition at once,” Shane said cheerfully. “And we still wouldn’t know because, guess what, science!”

“I fucking hate you,” Ryan grumbled, and held him tighter.

Below them, under them, around them, the generators pulsed again.

“Shane?” Ryan said tentatively.

“Hm?”

“I’m gonna tell you something, but I need you to not tell me it’s all in my head, okay?”

“I’ll try, but let’s be real, this is all suggestibility. It’s been a long time since we’ve overnighted somewhere creepy, and you’re already thinking about ghosts and infrasound. That’s more than enough to get into anyone’s head.”

“Is not.” Ryan paused, willing his heartbeat to slow down even though they were pressed chest to chest and Shane could probably tell just how close he was to cardiac arrest. “I mean, it very much is in my head, because I’m a human being, unlike you. But this part isn’t some wacky the-sound-waves-made-me-do-it thing. This has been in my head since way before we got here. This part is so real it’ll knock your socks off.”

Shane gamely gave him a smirk. “Me and my socks are ready.”

“I want to kiss you,” Ryan said in a hot, frantic rush. “Can I please kiss you?”

Under any other circumstances, it would be incredibly satisfying to see Shane looking this gobsmacked. 

“Is…” Shane cleared his throat. “Is this what it feels like to be in phase four? Because I’ve gotta say, this whole reopening process seems like it’s going pretty great.” 

“Not a phase,” Ryan said weakly. “This is totally non-phase related, trust me.”

“Also yes,” Shane added after a beat, seeming to realize Ryan was on the verge of disintegrating into atoms if he didn’t give a concrete answer. “Yes, you absolutely can.”

“Oh, thank _fuck_.” 

Ryan didn’t realize until he was saying it that he was already pressing his mouth to Shane’s. 

It wasn’t easy to have a sweepingly romantic first kiss while also beaming until his cheeks ached, but Shane didn’t seem to mind. His fingers threaded through Ryan’s hair, his lips parted softly under his, and he held Ryan like he could barely believe he was real. “Good,” he murmured into the heat of Ryan’s cheek. “That’s good, yeah. No phases here, no siree.”

When they parted to catch their breath, Ryan shuddered. “So, um. This is the greatest moment of my life and I’m not trying to ruin it, but I swear the walls just shook again.”

He really should have anticipated Shane’s answer. “You sure it’s not just me shaking your walls, baby?”

“You’re the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Ryan informed him, already ducking back down to trail kisses along his jaw.

“Seriously, it’s infrasound. We’ll have plenty of good stuff to tell Minjung about how it impacted us.”

Ryan looked up from where he’d been exploring the side of Shane’s neck with his mouth. “Oh, shit. Do we leave in this part? Are we scientifically bound to report our findings?”

Shane was smiling at him, crooked and carefree and so warm it made the last of Ryan’s jitters melt away like wax. “Hey. I’m no scientist, but I can tell you conclusively that this has nothing to do with infrasound so it’s not germane to the study.”

And, there in a sagging bed in a possibly-haunted reform school on the flipside of a pandemic, Shane pulled him in closer and kissed him again. 

* * *

**From:** Minjung Burgess <mjburgess@stanford.edu>

 **To:** Ryan S. Bergara, Shane Madej

Tues 9/29/2020 4:32 PM

**Subject:** Apologies

Good afternoon Ryan and Shane,

It was wonderful having the opportunity to work with you both. However, I want to offer my sincerest apologies for an unforeseen issue. Due to a technical oversight, neither of the generators was functioning the night you stayed at Preston. My team and I did not realize this until we were preparing to introduce another group of volunteers into the space. I am so sorry for the inconvenience. 

Thanks again for working with me, and I hope you still have enough footage to use for your show!

Best,

Minjung


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